After playing a suspected killer for Hitchcock in The Lodger, Ivor Novello suffers once more as a particularly unconvincing schoolboy whose episodic decline into poverty after accepting the blame for impregnating one of those Olde Bunne Shoppe floozies is symbolised by his descent of stairs and escalators and by lift (this being 1927, Hitch is deprived of the opportunity of showing us his star morosely flushing a toilet after yet another setback). Not typical Hitchcock by a long stretch, but the occasional visual flourish is just about enough to hold our interest.
Review of Downhill
